Extra Edition

I've been reading a daily newspaper since I was around ten years old. We always got the paper delivered; back then the Providence Journal published two editions each weekday, and we got the afternoon/evening one.

I remember that when I started college I used to buy the late edition of the Boston Globe out of habit, but eventually multiple daily editions disappeared and I got used to reading the paper in the morning, typically on the commute to work.

I remained a loyal Globe reader for a long time, until some time in the mid-90s. By that point the paper had declined so much that I could no longer tolerate the daily typos and grammatical errors, the stories that didn't provide the information I was looking for, and the complete lack of coverage of certain things. I switched to the New York Times, and it's been my paper of choice ever since.

You can call me a liberal, elitist snob if you want (I don't pretend not to be any of those things). And maybe the Times has lost a little luster too, but it's still an excellent paper. Their coverage of business, the arts, health and science, even their sports writing is top-notch.

But I really missed one thing about reading the Globe: the comics (though, before the Sidekick and "g" sections existed, they were never consistently in the same part of the paper, which was really aggravating). Because the Times Corporation owns the Globe, I soon learned that I was eligible to get the Globe in addition to the Times for a very low weekly rate, less than I'd been paying for just the Sunday Globe. I did it basically so I could read the daily comics again.

[Tangent: when I was about fourteen I got to go with my parents to a family wedding on Long Island. We stayed with my dad's cousin who lived on the outer edge of Queens, and I remember looking through her copy of the Times and asking why the paper didn't have any comics, and her awkwardly trying to explain to me why.]

So I've been getting both papers for over a decade, but I hardly ever look at anything in the Globe other than the comics, though the other sections do come in handy for cleaning up after the dog. But last week I got a letter telling me that my bargain rate on the Globe is going away as of next week. The new rate will be 50% off the cover price, but it would still be a significant monthly jump in cost, and I just don't think it's worth it to pay for a daily paper that I don't read. So I'll have to get used to reading the comics online, at least until those get put behind a paywall.